Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  Rossamünd had seen Freckle avoid a fulgar, and now the glamgorn had eluded a wit—albeit an unskilled one.

  Forcing herself back through the thickly interleaved branches Threnody returned, the clinging stems tangling with her hair.With a prolonged and angry grunt she pushed clear, yet something remained behind: her lustrous black curls.They were now a knotted mass weighing down several snaring twigs. For an awful breath Rossamünd thought the wicked undergrowth had wrenched her hair from her very scalp. With another shock he realized it was actually a wig. She had lost her hair from witting after all.

  The girl stood in the clearing, blinking and pale, caught in a confusion of shame and fear and doggedness, her now bald head part hidden beneath white bindings.

  “Haven’t you ever seen a wit without her hair before?” she said darkly as she snatched her wig back from the twiggy snare, bringing most of it with her.

  Utterly astounded and perplexed, Rossamünd said nothing.

  Sequecious came rolling over, rubicund face dribbling sweat.

  “What is being yee problems?” he huffed, then puffed, “No yelling or crying, tank yee! Come! Come! We must be to going back at castle,” which was his term for Wormstool. “Yee noises make for th’ ungerhaur to come!”

  For the short walk back to the cothouse Threnody remained tight-lipped, fidgeting with her wig, unable to set it right without a looking glass. “If mother had let me be a pistoleer . . . ,” Rossamünd heard her mutter, “and not made me into a stupid hair-losing neuroticrith!”

  They achieved the safety of the cothouse unharmed. Hands on head, Threnody fled to her cot. Down in the cellar, Rossamünd washed himself, expecting some angry observer to hurry down and haul him before the house-major as a monster-loving outramorine. Required in the common-mess, he went as quietly as he might. Despite his fears there was not one comment; no one grabbed him and cried “Sedorner!” as he shuffled past the observers on the entry floor. Shamefaced and with his head down, he returned the hack-watch to the house-major. Grystle said naught, while Semple the day-clerk simply gave Rossamünd a firm, gentlemanly nod—a greeting and nothing more. No one saw me with Freckle! They do not know! Rossamünd could not decide which was the stronger emotion: his guilt or his relief.

  In the common-mess he and Threnody came back together and were set to cleaning the thrumcops: sitting at the trestle, lopping the stubby stalks just above the ring, rubbing dirt from the spotty caps.

  Vanity restored,Threnody refused to look at Rossamünd.

  “Th’ good in these here,” Sequecious chuckled, holding up a thrumcop, “is these are being making us uneatable to the ungerhaur. Gets in tha sweats and so we tastes too bad. Very very good, tank yee.”

  Rossamünd nodded, scarcely following the cook’s monologue, wrinkling his nose at the off-smelling fungus. I don’t blame them.

  Sequecious rolled out of earshot.

  “What were you doing with that blighted bugaboo today?” Threnody whispered in a passion. “You had your salt-bag—you could have fought it. Instead I find you talking to it?”

  “I—I was . . .” Rossamünd had been caught and there was nothing to do but admit it.

  “Tell me, what in the Sundergird were you doing with it?” Threnody pressed. “Swapping potive recipes? Bogles are for slaying or driving away, not chitter-chatter! I did not get it, and now the little blightling will be off to murder someone’s chickens—or worse!”

  “Not every bogle is a ravening gnasher, Threnody, deserving nothing but a hasty death—and certainly not Freckle! He helped me—”

  “That’s the talk of a sedorner, Rossamünd! Watch your words,” Threnody seethed under her breath, looking to Sequecious obliviously chopping at something in the kitchen proper. “I cannot believe you actually know the wretched thing’s name.”

  “I’m not a sedorner just because I can see that not all monsters are bad,” Rossamünd countered quietly but hotly. “Else you could accuse me a murderer just for saying that not all folks are good!”

  “Ugh, lamp boy!” The girl rolled her eyes. “You sound more like Dolours every time we talk!You should have been an eeker, not a lamplighter.You’re most fortunate the cook did not spy what was what, or someone else on sentries for that matter. If you meet the thing again, get rid of it!”

  “I will not!”

  Threnody looked at him with slit-eyed scorn. “To be hung on a Catherine wheel is a bad way to end,” she warned.

  “How is it a good end to murder a friend?”

  “You just don’t understand, do you, lamp boy? Well at least you can trust me to keep this between you, me and the rising moon.”

  Rossamünd did not answer. He was happy he did not understand and if understanding meant slaughtering every bogle in sight, he never wanted to either.

  They worked on in angry silence.

  Between the guilt over the accidental tryst with Freckle and the regret for his falling-out with Threnody, Rossamünd kept to himself that night. Instead of joining his fellows in the gap between the Limpers’ arrival and douse-lanterns for games of checkers and lesquin and tots of grog, he sat on his cot and wrote a letter to Fransitart. Dating it the fifth of Herse, he described his safe arrival, gave his new address and sent his deepest affections to all who had them. It was a brief message. He did not mention the incident with the friendly glamgorn, though it sat heavily in his thoughts: such things should never be committed to paper. Rossamünd had never mentioned Freckle in any of his previous communications home. Asking the house-major if he might use his wafer, Rossamünd sealed the missive in a second blot of paper.

  The next morning he went to Aubergene, intending to ask him to pass his letter on to the Post-Master of Bleakhall at the end of the next night’s lighting-leg. The lampsmen had just returned from dousing, and were down in the cellars washing. Aubergene stood by a well bucket with hat on yet shirt off, showing bare back and shoulders crawling with scars and cruorpunxis: gruesome faces that glared and sneered from shoulder, back or chest, mute witness of a lamplighter’s violent life.

  Rossamünd almost slipped the last few steps in shock.

  Of course he had seen cruorpunxis before, but not so many on one person. This fellow seemed too young to possess such evidence of experience and slaughter. What great and terrible things had Aubergene done to earn such markings? How many of those snarling faces had actually deserved to end so ignobly as pictures to adorn a man’s trunk?

  Shaking, the young lighter turned and hurried back up and away. I thought Aubergene was only against the worst monsters—how many of the worst ones can there be? He would ask someone some other time for the letter to be delivered.

  Later that week an unexpected thing occurred. A letter came for Rossamünd.

  Rossamünd Bookchild

  Lampsman 3rd Class

  Wormstool Cothouse

  The Pendant Wig

  The Idlewild

  16th Heimio HIR 1601

  Rossamünd,

  I thank you for your communications of the 2nd of Heimio and the 6th of the same. I shall start with congratulations on your promotion. Its gaining might be early but it is still well deserved: you shall make a fine lighter.

  The matter of Numption and his bloom baths was so disturbing I nearly took the fast advice-boat in harbor back to the manse. Whatever I can do from here I will and shall.

  As you have no doubt deduced from the address line, the Marshal and I remain in the subcapital. The whole process of interviews and reviews goes interminably slow. One day we might get a brief meeting to simply make a time for another brief meeting that might occur another week later. After all the rush and bluster of the first summons, the bureaucrats here are in no great hurry to give us a hearing.

  All of this is made more troublesome by the unsettling buzz that the Marshal might actually be relieved of his post, and the longer we are delayed our proper review, the more likely this wretched injustice becomes.There is certainly something most insalubrious and cunning in th
e coincidence of events. What you have written to me in your second communiqué is unfortunately of no small surprise, but with so many good folk all so unfortuitously removed from the manse there is currently little that can be immediately done. What is more we need harder proofs than we currently have.

  I wish I could write you happier things, but now is not that season. Nevertheless it is wise to remember that the most important battle to win is the last.

  Of Discipline and Limb,

  Lamplighter’s Agent

  Falseman to the Earl of the Baton Imperial of Fayelillian, Lamplighter-Marshal of Winstermill

  Epistra Scuthae

  The Considine

  The Patricine

  Do not write to me upon these matters any further—some seals have been tampered; information is going where it should not.

  Once he had read it, Rossamünd simply looked at the missive numbly. He wished too that Sebastipole could have written happier things. Eventually numbness turned into an anxious, angry gripping up under his ribs as he realized just how helpless he was to aid the Lamplighter-Marshal or Sebastipole or even Numps. So much good in Rossamünd’s small sphere was being brought to dust by the skillful machinations of a self-serving few. He showed the letter to Threnody, who snorted cynically when she was done reading it.

  “The Marshal and the Agent flummoxed too: what are we to do now?” she said, apparently more interested in cleaning and admiring her pristine pistolas. “The honorable suffer and the crafty prevail.”

  Rossamünd thought to show it to the house-major, yet what would it matter to him really, besides which he was sure Sebastipole would rather his private messages were not shown about. So Rossamünd continued to heed Europe’s warning and keep his thoughts to himself.Yet no matter how many nights he lay half sleeping, fretting over a solution, it never came. All he could see before him were limitless days of duty at Wormstool—small, remote, irrelevant.

  Surely something good will come from all this wretchedness?

  One crisp, clear and early evening where the air itself felt as if it could snap with the chill, Rossamünd was at sentry on the roof with Under-Sergeant Poesides and Lampsman 2nd Class Theudas.

  The Fighting Top was a spectacular perch when no fog was about to hide the scene, a whole-compass view of the Frugelle, flat as flat could possibly be in any direction he cared to look. There were no hills, few very shallow valleys—mere depressions in the earth, and endless withered shrubs and drought-blasted trees. Indeed, from up on the roof, the only notable feature—apart from a tiny wood of swamp oaks to the northeast—was the Wormway itself. The Pendant Wig went west on the left hand, and kinked to east-northeast on the right: the final length of road before all habitation ceased completely and only wide, empty wilds were left. On the horizon, drawn as a deep reddish-purple line, was the western border of the fabled Ichormeer, the Gluepot, the Blood-Marsh, a brooding mark on the edge of vision. He could almost feel threwd radiate from it, reaching even here, like the heat of a bonfire.

  Yet tonight, sitting quietly, Rossamünd observed the lantern-watch at the lighting instead, already four lamps down the way. How he loved the beauty of the gradual increase in the light of a newly wound great-lamp, the colors shifting from grassy-green through straw-yellow and, if the water was new, to wine-vinegar clear.

  As he watched, a fifth lantern began to glow green.

  High off the ground, on watch with brave men, he felt his troubles markedly diminished here. A long and distant caw of a crow drifted in on the cold, fennel-perfumed breeze while restless wrens twittered and dashed about in the thistles. Rossamünd relished the lightening of his soul. Threnody and he were talking once more, though they were yet to fully heal, and the passing of only a little time left him feeling less troubled about Freckle. He gave an almost contented sigh.

  Poesides, who had been staring out to the south with a perspective glass, suddenly scuttled across the narrow walk between the tiles and the wall, crouched behind a rain-butt and waved the two others to do the same. “Stay out o’ sight,” he hissed excitedly. “There’s some li’l bogle-thingy creeping down by the runnet there, not much more than one part of a mile yonder. If it don’t spot us we might get a chance to take a few shots at the pot and spare ourselves a nasty end when we’re out lighting.”

  Grinning grimly, Theudas peeked over the battlement. “I see it! The movement by them dwarfish willow-myrtles, aye?”

  “Aye!” On his haunches, Poesides edged forward, easing up his firelock, creeping its muzzle on to the rim of the fortification.

  Straining his neck, Rossamünd could not see what they saw among the low twine of dry long-grass and tangled thickets of parched trees all across broad moorlands. Then he did: something small and furtive not more than two hundred yards away, making quick scutters from root clump to root clump along the shallow bed of a barely running creek, one of the many that curled east then north past the cothouse, to eventually drain into the sluggish river Frugal. In one horrid breath Rossamünd realized he was looking at Freckle. The midget glamgorn obviously thought it was being rather cunning, coming at the fortlet from behind, and seemed unaware that it was observed.

  Does he still want to take me away?

  “Come on, Master Haroldus, get yer firelock up,” Poesides chided. “Ye cain’t hit naught with it slack at yer side.”

  “But what would Mama Lieger say?” Rossamünd cried.

  The under-sergeant hesitated for a mere beat. He gave the young lighter a look as if to say “Who has a care for what Mama Lieger might say!” and lifted the butt of his own long-rifle, leveled it and, nice-and-easy, squeezed the trigger.

  Hiss-CRACK!

  The shot cracked out across the flats. Water hens burst from some covet away to the right and quit the scene in fright; teals hurried away, their wings whistling loudly; little wrens scattered to all points, their angry chirrups and the hurry of their flight filling the air.

  Miss—miss—miss . . . Rossamünd panicked, on the verge of a scream.

  Poesides cursed under his breath as he realized he had missed his mark.

  Rossamünd could have burst with relief.

  “Cunning little skink,” the under-sergeant growled. “I reckon he ducked that!”

  “Let me have a pull,” said Theudas. “Where is it?”

  “Leftmost of the three thickets, down by that huge thistle-bush,” answered Poesides, sitting back down on the angle of the roof, rapidly reloading his long-rifle.

  “Ah, I see it . . . ,” the younger man muttered, “I think.” Making a show of presenting his fusil, a cold sweat of guilty horror clinging in the small of his back, Rossamünd had gratefully lost sight of the glamgorn again. For the first time he was glad for his lack of skill with a fusil.The chance of him actually scoring a hit was remote at best at this range. “Shouldn’t we just send someone out to grab it or fright it off?” he asked in a hoarse croak, wanting to buy the little fellow some time to escape.

  “What!” Poesides exclaimed huskily. “And chance some bigger basket springing at us from some nell? I have seen little blighters cooperatin’ with some great gnasher, lure ye along thinking ye’re in for an easy marking to add to yer skin and boo! Out of no place: something thrice as big, and ye’re the mug being chased right back the way ye came.” He primed the pan. “Our li’l mite out there is probably in cahoots with that nasty skulker we almost met out in the fog the other morn,” the under-sergeant added as he rammed the wadding home.

  “No! I heard that handsome Branden Rose dig got that one,” Theudas corrected.

  “Well, either way, ye can’t let a bogle go free—it just ain’t moral.”

  Rossamünd just wished Freckle would get away and save himself. He winced as Theudas took aim.

  Hissss-FSSST!

  A misfire!

  Theudas had taken a shot, yet all he got was a flash in the pan, no burst from the breech, nor ball hurtling from the muzzle. “Not again!” he cried. “I don’t care what Shudder-cran
k says, there is something a-foul with the touchhole!” Amid a flurry of uncouth words Theudas wrestled with his weapon to find the fault.

  “It’s fossicking about in the thicket over yonder . . . Do you think it suspects it’s been found out?” Poesides chuckled, and humming “Stand While You Can” to himself, paused between the third and fourth stanza to let go another shot. “Ah, blight it! It’s surely a crafty li’l bugaboo!”

  The musket fire brought the other lampsmen, poking their heads through the trap in the roof or out of the unshuttered windows a floor below, to catch sight of the spectacle. Aubergene arrived on the Fighting Top bearing his own long-rifle, but he and the onlookers were to be disappointed.

  The glamgorn was gone.

  Rossamünd sat blank-faced, frazzled nerves tingling in strange and anxious relief.

  “Well, either we hit it, or it found some way to scurry off,” the under-sergeant said, chewing his bottom lip, “ ’cause there ain’t been a movement down in the creek for a little while now.” Poesides searched through his perspective glass till it was too dark to see, and prevailed on Crescens Hugh the lurksman to aid him.Yet, to Rossamünd’s secret delight, not a trace of the diminutive creature could be discovered.

  He lay his head to sleep that night with the barred, misty light of the waxing moon shining on his face through a high window, feeling keenly the huge difference between him and his fellow lighters. After their visit with Mama Lieger, Rossamünd had nurtured the notion that these men were of a more subtle cast.Yet after that afternoon’s shooting, they had confirmed themselves to him as unthinking monsterhaters. What they called moral, he called mindlessness; what he would call right knowing, they would call treachery most foul. He lay and watched the moon a long time, understanding full well Phoebë’s cold isolation.